“I will win my appeal. We will have a new trial, and everything that they did wrong at the last trial will be done right at the new trial,” said Ragin last month after his sentencing hearing during an interview with NewsChannel 3’s Jessica Larche.

Prosecutors spent weeks showing evidence that Ragin stabbed his family more than a dozen times each in 2011. They said he covered their bodies in gasoline, set the apartment on fire and took off to his hometown in South carolina with the young son he and his wife Crystal shared.

There is also surveillance video of Ragin at a Newport News convenience store buying gasoline the night before the bodies were discovered. The cashier said she noticed Ragin’s hands were bloody that night. An expert testified that the cuts on his hands likely came from the blade of a knife.

“I don’t even see why he’s fighting this,” said Shelby Hancock, Crystal Ragin’s sister. “There’s no other person responsible because there’s no other person that could have done such horrible, horrific things.”